Lost... Think you‘re tough enough for Michigan‘s woods? Think again

Many people buy an SUV for that macho feeling of power and superiority over those measly little cars that resemble a bar of soap. They’ve been sold by those ads showing powerful off-road experiences as the erstwhile family car charges up a mountainside or fords a forest stream. Yet only about 10% of SUVs ever leave the paved roads. Drivers long for that thrilling U.P. driving experience. Now‘s your chance!
Maybe you’d better think again.

STUCK IN A HOLE
My friend Richard is an old Yooper. He drives a four-wheel-drive pickup truck with rear-view mirrors that fold back so they won’t be ripped off by the brush as he lurches along an old logging trail. His truck’s paint job looks like it was scoured with steel wool.
Last summer, carrying a ORV four-wheeler in the back of the truck like a lifeboat on the deck of a yacht, he and a hunting buddy went off into the woods in search of game.
I’ve been along on such trips in search of hidden beaver ponds. Richard knows the trails. What looks to the untrained eye like a faint gap in the trees turns out to be a grown-over logging road long since abandoned. Not maintained, those trails soon erode into rocky obstacle courses.
One can’t drive in the ruts themselves, for they are so deep that an ordinary vehicle will bottom out, risking a lost muffler or even a differential. The trick when driving that stuff is to keep the wheels on the high middle and the edge. It’s easy in wet weather for the front wheels to slip off on one side, the rear wheels on the other, so one is driving almost sideways.
Richard and his buddy got the truck stuck in a mud hole. This was not a mud hole like those the Michigan Tech students drive their cars through until they change color to a muddy brown -- little open places wiped clear by the windshield wipers. Richard’s mud hole seized his truck like an octopus grabbing a hapless crab. It would not move.
Their only escape, after he lost his shoes in the mud, was to unload the four-wheeler. It barely got out and they had to drive it to a logger. A tow truck wouldn’t have been able to extricate his pickup. Only a skidder used to haul logs out of the forest was strong enough to get the truck out.

GREASY MUD
We had a similar adventure one spring just after breakup of winter. We attempted the 18-mile Redridge-Tapiola road in the Upper Peninsula. The sign at the entrance is a clear warning: “Seasonal road. Not plowed in winter.” This wasn’t winter. It was spring.
It looked okay at the start, just a little muddy, but the ruts grew deeper, the mud softer. We ground along awhile in second gear, thankful for snow tires and the high clearance of our VW bus, but the farther we went, the worse it got. Clearly we would never make the 18 miles, but could we turn around? I stopped and nearly fell flat as I stepped out of the driver’s seat. The surface of the ground was covered with an inch of greasy mud like Vaseline.
My wife was eight months pregnant. With the bouncing along the ruts, I was afraid she’d have the baby right there. My hands were clammy and my face pale. With great difficulty, the gentle rocking one learns from winter driving gradually got us turned around and we got out. We swore that if we ever tried that road again it would be in August, not May.

LOST IN THE WOODS  
Last Fall we got in trouble again. Imagine what an ant feels like clambering along on its six little legs down at the bottom of your lawn. There is no horizon. In all directions the vegetation looks the same. It’s flat country and goes on and on.
At first, using a good Baraga County tourist map that showed the seldom-used trails, we were in search of the upper Slate River falls. Unfortunately, nothing is marked. There were no houses on the dirt trail. Though it was well maintained and smooth, with no mud holes, it didn’t even have a line of power poles we could follow to civilization.
Without a compass, unable to tell direction because of the overcast sky, we drove on and on as the single track trail turned right and left, up hills and down, with no clear view, just trees and underbrush.
Hours later, thanks to directions from folks in the only other vehicle we encountered, we learned we were on part of the famous Huron Grade railway line, a railway that was abandoned before it was finished because the rail bed gave way under the first locomotive, sinking it in the swamp. We emerged somewhere east on US 41, swearing never to do that again.

WHAT TO TAKE
If you do venture forth into the UP woods, make sure the tank is full, take a good map, compass, food, water, blankets, and plenty of bug dope. The bears won’t eat you if you get lost, but the mosquitoes will. Your cell phone may be out of range. And tell someone your travel plans so if you don’t return in a few days someone will look for you.
If you get stuck, it’s a long walk out. Stay on the road. Once 50 yards into that forest, you’ll be so lost you might only be found by some deer hunter next fall.
There are parts of the U.P. with only three people per square mile. It’s beautiful, wild country. Just be careful and all your adventures should be without hazards.


   Harley Sachs divides his time between Houghton in the U.P. during the summer and Portland, Oregon in the off-season. 




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